

The levels were also very long, lasting several minutes, with sparse checkpoints ensuring you’ll have to repeat sections multiple times if one obstacle starts to grind your gears. Our initial impression is that it’s a little too unforgiving, but multiple playthroughs will probably mitigate this. Often we would slip right off small platforms, seemingly from the front edge and off the back one, despite careful timing. Donkey Kong’s platforming physics seemed a little floaty and slippery considering the big ape’s girth. Simply getting through the levels proper proved a great challenge, but we’re not sure it’s always for good reason. Diddy’s jetpack and peanut gun abilities will doubtlessly be needed to get at some hidden treasures, but Ryan assured us that 2-player co-op tactics won’t be required to pass any of the levels – you can get to the ending solo with Donkey Kong if you wish. Old school fans who remember going to great lengths to collect the Hero Coins in DKC2 will have no shortage of torturous challenges this time around. We had to avoid overhanging crystals that would crush us unless we ducked, and enemies throwing bombs that collapse sections of the rails – all while collectible items hung in dangerous locations prodding us to take more and more risks. For instance, we got some quality time with one of the new mine cart levels.
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He didn’t give us any advice on how to get said items either, which added icing to the difficulty cake. We want the players to find these things on their own, and as much as you’d like to know some secrets I won’t do it,” he said with a wry smile. “We just don’t want to spoil it for everyone. This time you’ve got puzzle pieces and golden coins along with the K-O-N-G letters to find, although spokesperson Ryan was tight-lipped about exactly what these new items unlock. It’ll be essential to finding the piles of hidden items throughout the game. Shaking the Wiimote and Nunchuck up and down (like in the racer Donkey Kong Jungle Beat) causes Donkey Kong to pound the ground with his massive hands, enabling him to break apart terrain and open new pathways. Ducking and shaking the Wiimote will allow you to blow flowers out of the way revealing hidden banana caches, or neuter some enemies covered in fire, exposing their weak points. It’s just as useful as it was in the SNES classics, but we doubt we’ll be using it as often as we did before simply because it would tire us out. To barrel roll through your enemies, you’ll have to shake the Wiimote while running. Wii, DKC Returns’s Wiimote functionality is a major part of the game that you won’t be able to avoid using (so much, in fact, that Classic or Gamecube Controller functionality is not an option). Unlike the minor additions we saw in New Super Mario Bros.

The first major addition is the Wii Remote’s motion control abilities. From what we’ve seen so far, the end result is sure to be a quick fan favourite, although some new additions might raise an eyebrow.
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Retro Studios is best known for its Metroid Prime series on the Gamecube and Wii, but creating a new 2-D side-scroller for the ensemble-cast Kong family is a very different project indeed. This isn’t like the predecessors on the Super Nintendo. More importantly is the fact that this 2-D platformer is incredibly hard.

Part of the reason is the ghastly fact that when playing the 2-player co-op mode, both Donkey and Diddy Kong’s deaths are added toward your life count loss. By the end of it, we had a big fat Game Over. At the beginning of the play session, we had 47 lives. At last month’s Nintendo Holiday Preview event, we got to try out the final build of Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii.
